Just thinking about this one and my experiences in the 2 years since I posted. In order to improve the standard of this exercise, I got my (new) QA team to design and implement the glass auditing sheets themselves and trained all members of staff in the importance of glass and breakages. Still didn't work. Still had the same problems of people raising issues, nothing being done and no support from engineering (including on one work order, which was closed with the comment "couldn't be found" when the breakage was obvious and the QA who had raised it was on shift!)

So, can anyone share their learnings and how you get the quality of glass auditing to be where it needs to be?

I feel that the glass register should be conducted at least weekly as I have seen great benefits in doing this for my clients and in turn they have seen great benefits. Even if they conduct a pre-start check up I feel that a glass register will help in minimising the risk. As an auditor for an insurance company I have to ensure that all risks and liabilities are accounted for. HACCP is all about minimising or preventing the risks and that is eaxcatly what having a glass register is there for provided it is being used correctly!!

I believe it's a waste of time as well.
I have a master list of all glass and brittle plastic in the facility. We have broken down our facility into four areas which get inspected once per month as part of our Food Safety/GMP audits. Each area has a list of glass and plastic that only contains glass and plastic that has been determined to be "reasonably likely" to cause product contamination if it were to break.
Each one of these four lists contain anywhere between 5-15 items. So, while it's not a terrible burden to check them on a monthly basis, you still have the problem of only checking them on a monthly basis

I would have to agree that the best solution would be to pare the list down to only those "reasonably likely" to cause product contamination and check those as part of a pre-op checklist.

Why not delegate certain tasks to juniors that you have trained and that way all the areas get covered. People often neglect forklifts with their lights an I have seen many incidents in Australia where forklift lights have been cracked and they are operating in production areas.

Why not delegate certain tasks to juniors that you have trained and that way all the areas get covered. People often neglect forklifts with their lights an I have seen many incidents in Australia where forklift lights have been cracked and they are operating in production areas.

It's my experience with forklifts also.

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Simon TimperleyIFSQN Administrator

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Internal auditing should reveal the presence of non-inventoried Glass. I think its one of those things that is pointless in theory, but establishes control and validates your program. This is where a prerequisite program is necessary to control the risk.

Internal auditing should reveal the presence of non-inventoried Glass. I think its one of those things that is pointless in theory, but establishes control and validates your program. This is where a prerequisite program is necessary to control the risk.

That wasn't the gist of the question. Checks on critical items are not pointless and essential as demonstrated by the requirement in food safety management standards (Take SQF 11.7.5 Control of Foreign Matter Contamination as an example).

Glass auditing atleast once per month is essential to check each and every glass item and the problems related. Regularly glasses can be checked and if there is a breakage it is repaired and recorded. But specifically checking all the glasses during regular visits is not possible. So glass audit is one of the critical controls.

Personally I believe existance/condition checks of high risk glass and brittle plastic items in and around the process should be checked daily or by shift by operators. How much product can you produce in a month?

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Simon TimperleyIFSQN Administrator

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Personally I believe existance/condition checks of high risk glass and brittle plastic items in and around the process should be checked daily or by shift by operators. How much product can you produce in a month?

What you say is absolutely perfect. Operators checking the glasses of critical areas are good. This is being done everyday by workers, operators and QA personnel also. But it is impossible to check the glass of each window everyday. Thats why its essential to check all the glasses atleast once per month

What you say is absolutely perfect. Operators checking the glasses of critical areas are good. This is being done everyday by workers, operators and QA personnel also. But it is impossible to check the glass of each window everyday. Thats why its essential to check all the glasses atleast once per month

Yes I agree lower risk items still need to be checked, but at less frequency.

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Simon TimperleyIFSQN Administrator

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We could make a huge list of rules, terms and conditions, but you probably wouldn’t read them.

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Curious how you all perform these audits, most company I worked at had 2 stage audits. monthly & daily.....Monthly carried out by QA to check machines facility area etc. and daily as part of a line start up check carried out by production line leader which Qa would check was complete.

However with my new role as a qc supervisor iv found they have a 15 page monthly audit which includes everything from the factory to MR chairman Bosses plastic vase and calculator in his office well away from production area... with a weekly audit that lists similar items...

I want to revise this procedure a documents to maybe only encompass the main factory areas? are the offices even required? There is little or in my opinion no risk to food safety from a plastic vase in Mr boss office other side of building..

I believe in my small company I would only need Factory general area, warehouse, Production lines, Reception Area (as close to factory entrance) Canteen. toilets and production office as is on production side... as a monthly.....and as a daily or weekly a smaller more of a high risk to food safety audit would be such things as production line Dials, buttons, scrapper handles cleaning equipment etc , items with high use around product.

And with the above remove Mr Boss offices and sales team office etc which includes things like Pc keyboards mouse sugar pots etc which I think is way over kill.

My 1st G&B monthly audit took me 4hrs! 26 pages of what I felt was a waste of time in upstairs offices well off the production areas..

Glass auditing is not and never should be critical. I would suggest that if it has been identified as a signifcant enough risk that it happens continually then there is a serious failing within the manfacturing process.

The frequency on which the register is checked is key. This should be established based ona risk assessment.

Curious how you all perform these audits, most company I worked at had 2 stage audits. monthly & daily.....Monthly carried out by QA to check machines facility area etc. and daily as part of a line start up check carried out by production line leader which Qa would check was complete.

However with my new role as a qc supervisor iv found they have a 15 page monthly audit which includes everything from the factory to MR chairman Bosses plastic vase and calculator in his office well away from production area... with a weekly audit that lists similar items...

I want to revise this procedure a documents to maybe only encompass the main factory areas? are the offices even required? There is little or in my opinion no risk to food safety from a plastic vase in Mr boss office other side of building..

I believe in my small company I would only need Factory general area, warehouse, Production lines, Reception Area (as close to factory entrance) Canteen. toilets and production office as is on production side... as a monthly.....and as a daily or weekly a smaller more of a high risk to food safety audit would be such things as production line Dials, buttons, scrapper handles cleaning equipment etc , items with high use around product.

And with the above remove Mr Boss offices and sales team office etc which includes things like Pc keyboards mouse sugar pots etc which I think is way over kill.

My 1st G&B monthly audit took me 4hrs! 26 pages of what I felt was a waste of time in upstairs offices well off the production areas..

Curious how you all perform these audits, most company I worked at had 2 stage audits. monthly & daily.....Monthly carried out by QA to check machines facility area etc. and daily as part of a line start up check carried out by production line leader which Qa would check was complete.

However with my new role as a qc supervisor iv found they have a 15 page monthly audit which includes everything from the factory to MR chairman Bosses plastic vase and calculator in his office well away from production area... with a weekly audit that lists similar items...

I want to revise this procedure a documents to maybe only encompass the main factory areas? are the offices even required? There is little or in my opinion no risk to food safety from a plastic vase in Mr boss office other side of building..

I believe in my small company I would only need Factory general area, warehouse, Production lines, Reception Area (as close to factory entrance) Canteen. toilets and production office as is on production side... as a monthly.....and as a daily or weekly a smaller more of a high risk to food safety audit would be such things as production line Dials, buttons, scrapper handles cleaning equipment etc , items with high use around product.

And with the above remove Mr Boss offices and sales team office etc which includes things like Pc keyboards mouse sugar pots etc which I think is way over kill.

My 1st G&B monthly audit took me 4hrs! 26 pages of what I felt was a waste of time in upstairs offices well off the production areas..

My first question would have to be what is the risk presented by the glass and plastic in the office? This is where you need to consider the risk of the areas which are included within the register.

Interests:Art, sailing, woodwork, passion for all things packaging,
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Posted 29 May 2014 - 12:05 AM

Hi Simon

Regular inspections are required as part of any internal GMP audits, but I don't see the value of weekly walk around inspections of everything on the Glass/Hard Brittle Plastic/Ceramic register.

Housekeeping and cleaning schedules should have a glass reporting section, so that any issues can be reported to engineering to ensure they are fixed immediately. Often a glass breakage event is not reported to the very people who need to fix the broken glass, plastic etc.

The biggest issue I have is people claiming polycarbonate shields on machines don't break!!!!!!!! When auditing packaging plants I have been told this so many times, only to find numerous broken shields around the plant with LARGE CHUNKS missing out of them. Maybe they have been using them as cricket bats!!!!! Or this part of match fixing?

We pack some of our products in glass jars. We store empty jars in our warehouse in packaging material storage area in a designated area. We also have glass lab supplies in our QC lab. Can someone give me some information on conducting an annual mock glass incident?

Glass auditing is not and never should be critical. I would suggest that if it has been identified as a signifcant enough risk that it happens continually then there is a serious failing within the manfacturing process.

The BRC standard does state 'there shall be no unnecessary non-production glass or brittle plastic and any glass or brittle plastics shall be controlled and recorded on a register and checked for damage at an appropriate frequency'.

It may be 'critical' to check a brittle item that cannot be replaced. Checking it is intact at the start and end of production assures the that the product hasn't been contaminated during the production run and these sort of checks are quite common.